SARA-KP Report Archive

Date	Name	Affiliation	Other Observers	Instrument	Hours Observed	Hours Lost	Observing Program
11/30/2020	William Keel	University of Alabama	Fluffiest Cat	ARC CCD	10	0	Galaxies in H-alpha. Tweaked track rates in absence of guider, starting with Gary Henson's custom rates. Focus 335000-327000.
11/29/2020	Gary Henson	ETSU	Rutherford	Spectrograph and CCD	11	0	Spectroscopy of Massive Stars and H-Alpha monitoring of M31 Found Track Rate of 15.055 RA and +0.0102 Dec to be solid for M31 Tracking Good in all parts of sky, but needed several minutes for E/W oscillations to settle when pointing to low west targets.
11/28/2020	Xianming Han	Butler University	none	CCD	11	0	eclipsing binary. The focus was good enough at the beginning of the night, so I did not want to touch it.
11/27/2020	Todd Hillwig	Valparaiso University	None	ARC CCD	12	0	Planetary nebula central star monitoring. Stars were oval, elongated, doubled, or streaked in at least 2/3 of the images, at five minutes. Most stable in the northwest.
11/27/2020	Samalka Anandagoda	Clemson University	Kyle Pellegrin	CCD	10	2	M3N 2008-12a, GRB afterglows. The telescope focus was good in the beginning of the night (399 000). But then it went out of focus during the latter part of the night and was extremely difficult to get it back to focus. Other than that everything worked fine.
11/25/2020	Gary Henson	ETSU	none	Spectrograph	7	2	Spectroscopy of Massive Stars Todd Hillwig could not connect through VNC (servers not yet installed and running). ACE will fix, but took over night at last minute from Todd since weather excellent.
11/24/2020	Saida Caballero	FIT	Kamp, Le, Abraham, o'Brien	CCD	11	0	There were pointing issues where the telescope seemed to oscillate back in forth from its position, making the stars appear elongated. Also, had the recurring issue where the telescope went out of focus and took a while to get back to a focus that worked. There were a few times the humidity spiked but cam back to normal levels. This may be an issue with the WYIN's humidity instrument specifically.
11/23/2020	Nayra Rodriguez	Nayra Rodriguez	Nayra Rodriguez	Nayra Rodriguez	Nayra Rodriguez	Nayra Rodriguez	Test for student research projects on exoplanet transits. It was difficult to get focus the first time, and need to refocus every one-two hours. ~45 min trying to use autoguiding with no luck. The connection with ACE Tel was down on three occasions. Had to close due to high humidity at the end of the night.
11/22/2020	Xianming Han	Butler University	none	CCD	11	0.5	eclipsing binary. It was extremely hard to focus. Moving by 5000 produces random effect on the focus. So getting focused is a matter of luck.
11/21/2020	Veronique Petit	UD/MCAO	None	Spectro	9	0	Used the spectrograph all night. Maxim DL crashed a few times when switching from the ASCOM to the FLI. Not that when this happens, the setpoint of the FLI cooler goes back to 10 degrees. When this happens, one needs to remember to start the coolers back AND put the setpoint down. Tracking and guiding worked perfectly all night, even in the East.
11/20/2020	Veronique Petit	UD/MCAO	None	Spectro	9	0	Used the spectrograph all night. Maxim DL crashed a few times when switching from the ASCOM to the FLI. Not that when this happens, the setpoint of the FLI cooler goes back to 10 degrees. When this happens, one needs to remember to start the coolers back AND put the setpoint down. Tracking and guiding worked perfectly all night, even in the East.
11/20/2020	Keely Scott	TAMUC, Dr. Williams	Amber Stinson	Kitt Peak, White Dwarf	10	1.5-2	Focus was not easily found tonight, could take anywhere from 15 minutes to 45 minutes, and some unpredictable wind towards the end of the night.